The Little Things

Staying in persona does not mean saying you are a different person. It means
being a different person. One of the hardest, and most interesting, parts is
getting the little things right. Before you worry about inventing ancestors for
seven generations and an elaborate personal history-things which few people
tell strangers in any case-it is worth first learning as much as possible about
the little things that anyone from your time and land would have known. The
more such details you integrate into your medieval self, the better you can
convince others (and yourself) that you are your persona.

One way of doing this would be as a group project, involving two successive
gatherings a few weeks apart, both held out of persona. In the first, each
person tries to stump the others with questions their personae could have
answered without thinking-the sort of questions that you could answer without
thinking if they were asked of your twentieth century persona. The questions
must be ones for which the answer can be learned; invented answers are not
allowed.

I suspect that most of us, myself included, would find that we did not know the
answers to a majority of the questions. Those who were sufficiently interested
could then go home, or to the library, and try to find the answers to as many
as possible. In the second gathering, we would come back together to report to
each other the answers we had succeeded in finding.

I have not actually participated in such gatherings, but I have spent some time
thinking up questions-to some of which, for my own persona, I do not know the
answers. Here they are. All are intended to apply to your persona prior to your
arrival in the Current Middle Ages.

What kinds of money do you use? What are the relative values of the different
kinds? How much does dinner at the inn cost? How much does a horse cost? How
much does a skilled worker make per month?

What system do you use to describe what time it is? When does one day end and
another begin? How do you tell time (sundial? clock?)?

What system do you use for describing dates? What is your calendar like?

Can you read? If so, what have you read? What poems, tales, etc. have you heard
told?

What do you know about history? Have you heard of Alexander the Great? Julius
Caesar? Charlemagne? Vergil? Saladin? What do you "know" about each?

What do you know about geography? What is the most distant country you have
heard of? The most distant country you have met someone from?

Who is your immediate overlord (title and/or name)? Who is your ultimate
overlord?

What is your religion? What duties (prayers, fasts, dietary restrictions, etc.)
does it impose? What do you (your persona) know about its doctrines and
history?

What do you eat for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? What do you drink? Where do your
food and drink come from? How is the food cooked (style of cooking, tools, how
does the oven work, etc.)?

What sorts of wild animals live in your area? Which are dangerous? Which are
good to eat? How are the latter hunted?

What clothes do you wear? What are they made of? Where do they come from?

What crops are grown in your part of the world? What goods, if any, are
exported, and how are they transported? What goods are imported?

What language(s) do you speak? What language(s) do other people in your town
(city, barony...) speak?

If you or one of your friends wrote a poem, what form would you use? What about
a song?

What "mythological" beasts do you know about? Which ones do you believe in?
What do you believe about them?

Most of these questions are specific to your persona and so may seem to violate
the requirement that the answers be researched instead of made up. But in most
cases, although research may not tell you for certain what would be true of
your persona, it will limit you to a few alternatives. A twentieth century
American might plausibly have any of a number of different things for
breakfast, but there are far more things that he would not have.

One final remark. Some of you, after reading the list (and perhaps making some
additions of your own) will conclude that only a professional scholar can stay
in persona. There are few things that must be done perfectly in order to be
worth doing, and staying in persona is not one of them. The more such questions
you can answer the better a job you can do. Finding the answers-recreational
scholarship-is one of the things the Society is about. And fun.

A few Answers:

"Beer, manchet and fish or meat were the usual breakfast of the members of
the Percy family, according to the Northumberland Household Book of 1512. The
parents were served with a quart of wine as well as a quart of beer, but wine
was evidently thought unwholesome for the children, who received beer
alone." C. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain, p.376. She also
asserts that pottage was a common breakfast, especially for the poor, in
England in the middle ages.

"... the Caliph's breakfast was served him, of the remains of the
previous evening's supper, cold lamb or chicken, or some such dish." Eric
Schroeder, The People of Mohammad. The reference is to the Caliph
Mu`awia.

"There are others who sprinkle ground pepper over the food when it is cut for
eating; this is a practice of the Christians and Berbers." From Manuscrito
Anonimo, a 13th century Andalusian cookbook.

[ Illustration removed ]

A famous saint, Abu-l-Hoseyn En-Nooree, seeing a vessel on the Tigris
containing thirty denns (clay jars) belonging to the Caliph Mu`tadid, and being
told that they contained wine, took a boat-pole, and broke them all, save one.
When brought before the Caliph to answer for this action, and asked by him"Who
made thee Mohtesib (inspector of the markets)?" he boldly answered, "He who
made thee Caliph!"-and was pardoned.

(From an account of events of the year 295 A.H., cited by Lane in Arabian
Society in the Middle Ages)

Some Tricks

To stay in persona is convincingly to be another person. The first one you must
convince is yourself. To do so, I find it useful to deliberately adopt certain
tricks of behaviour in order to remind myself that I am now Cariadoc and not
David.

Some are ways of speaking. I do not speak Arabic (and nobody would understand
me if I did) but I can and do adopt medieval Muslim locutions. One example is
the practice of always following the name of God with some admiring
comment-most commonly "The Compassionate, The Merciful," but sometimes "He that
upholds the Heavens without pillars above us" or some other phrase borrowed
from period sources. Another is following the name of a good Muslim who is dead
with "on whom be peace," and the name of a prophet or a particularly holy man
with "on whom be the peace and the blessing"-and adding to the name of a
notable non-Muslim the phrase "curses on him for an unbeliever." (I usually
omit that one, out of consideration for the perils of being a Muslim in a
predominately Christian society.)

Medieval (and modern) Arabs eat only with the right hand, using the left for
all "unclean" purposes. I think it likely that a medieval Moor, coming from a
similar culture and one heavily influenced by the Arabs, would do the same.
Cariadoc does not use his left hand in eating. The practice is not only (I
think) authentic; it also provides me with a silent reminder of who, at the
moment, I am.

For similar reasons, I do not wear glasses at events. Doing without glasses
when I am in persona is not merely a matter of being authentic --- it is also a
striking way of reminding myself that I am in a different world. Fuzzier. As an
adult, Cariadoc has never seen the stars clearly, and cannot recognize a friend
across the length of a hall. Those are some of the ways in which he is a
different person from David.

These tricks are mostly ways of convincing myself that I am a different
person, although they may help to remind other people as well. Most of them are
specific to my persona. The equivalents for your persona I leave for you to
discover; they almost certainly exist.

[ Illustration removed ]

Yakub bin El-Leyth Es-Saffar, having adopted a predatory life, excavated a
passage one night into the palace of Dirhem, the Governor of Sijistan. After he
had made up a convenient bale of gold and jewels, and the most costly stuffs,
he was proceeding to carry it off, when he happened in the dark to strike his
food against something hard on the floor. Thinking it might be a jewel of some
sort, a diamond perhaps, he picked it up and put it to his tongue, and, to his
equal mortification and disappointment, found it to be a lump of rock-salt.
Throwing down his precious booty, he left it behind him, and withdrew
empty-handed to his habitation. Next day the governor's treasurer was alarmed
to discover that a great part of the treasure and other valuables had been
removed; but on examining the package which lay on the floor, his astonishment
was not less, to find that not a single article had been conveyed away. The
Governor had it proclaimed that if the thief would announce himself, he would
be pardoned and rewarded. Yakub, relying upon the promise, presented himself
before the governor, and explained that, having by inadvertance tasted the
Governor's salt in his house, and so become the Governor's guest, he had been
unwilling to violate the laws of hospitality by stealing from his host, and had
therefore put down his booty and departed. The governor appointed him to an
office of importance, where he gradually rose in power until he became the
founder of a Dynasty.

(Based on an anecdote in Arabian Society in the Middle Ages by Edmund
Lane).